On 16 August 2021, people waited outside Hospital de Clínicas in Montevideo for a third COVID-19 vaccination. Reuters identifies them as people who had already received Sinovac’s CoronaVac and were now due a Pfizer-BioNTech dose. This was more specific than a generic vaccination queue: a policy of combining vaccine platforms had become a sequence of individual appointments.
Uruguay began its campaign in March and expanded booking by age group. Each eligible person still had to confirm the rules, secure an appointment, reach the site, complete identification and remain for observation. Queue speed alone could not measure access; seating, instructions and travel distance mattered, especially to older people. The photograph fixes a distinctive moment. These were not people waiting for a first chance to be vaccinated. They were returning after an earlier course, responding to changing evidence and new variants. Public-health policy under revision appeared as people once again offering an arm in the order assigned.